Quotessence
Home / Authors / Gilbert K. Chesterton
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsWorldPeopleMayModernDoeLiteratureMeanShouldHumansKnowsThinkingBelieveHas BeensChildrenReasonRealTwoWay

Famous Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

“You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?”

PeopleKnowsMenFirstsLongDoeSoulLastsLawBreakAliveBrokenPoliceBlueFatsHatedCriedButtons
Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon.”

MenShouldFirstsDoeSometimesActionStrongViewsPrinciplesCreativeTreeOughtBedIdealsGardenArguingBoatConceptionLunchRootedMinorsReverseRoofArrangementsFlexibleBalloonsUnchangeable
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.”

KnowsMenWorldRealCommunityExistenceGroupsChosenVarietyGatesCompanionCivilizedReal WorldFierceClansCivilized SocietyMonasteriesCliqueUncompromisingDivergenceSmall Communities
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“If a man called Christmas Day a mere hypocritical excuse for drunkenness and gluttony, that would be false, but it would have a fact hidden in it somewhere. But when Bernard Shaw says the Christmas Day is only a conspiracy kept up by poulterers and wine merchants from strictly business motives, then he says something which is not so much false as startling and arrestingly foolish. He might as well say that the two sexes were invented by jewellers who wanted to sell wedding rings.”

IfsMenWellsTwoFactsMightWould BeWantedSexSellsWineMereExcuseFoolishRingsChristmasMotiveConspiracyDrunkennessMerchantsHypocriticalChristmas DayGluttonyWedding RingBernard Shaw
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.”

MenKindEnoughMightForceEnemyModernPersonalityWorshipWeakExtremesIntellectAdmireOppressionCowardAllegianceMeannessMorbidityGreat Personality
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.”

IfsMenMayMatterFactsWishViewsThousandTenRemainsPoint Of ViewIgnorantInferiorsDemonstrationFathomBeetles
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.”

IfsMenHumansHateHumanitySpeakNationsEffortRaceClassMiddleMankindStrangeKingsDespairSoldierCuriousMiddle ClassPriestsAdoreDistrustHumaneSailorDividingWorking Man
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people.... When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we touch the deepest philosophy.”

PeopleThinkingMenPhilosophyWaterPleasureFireFierceSteelMudInkManlyWomanlyWetness
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.”

PeopleKnowsMenWorldHas BeensSoundHurtCryEssentialsLateMovedTyrannyToo LateHistorianImpatienceWisest
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.”

MenWholeIndividualWifeStupidTheoryHusbandAffairCleverManageHouseholdEugenicsSweepingPseudoScientific TheoryWholesaleMoney Power
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image

“There is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern and a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscape of his dreams; the sort of world he would like to make or in which he would like to wander, the strange flora and fauna, his own secret planet, the sort of thing he likes to think about. This general atmosphere, and pattern or a structure of growth, governs all his creations, however varied.”

ThinkingMenWorldMindDreamArtistGrowthImaginationSecretQualityCreationStrangePlanetsTypeOriginalsStructurePatternsArchitectureLikesWanderLandscapeAtmosphereImageryFloraFlora And Fauna
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
Create image